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28 Mar 2003 : Column 629—continued

Sir Paul Beresford: I note the hon. Lady's thoughtful point about the fact that some people are unable to maintain their hedges because of their age or financial position. What would happen if the local authority decided that the hedge should come down to 2 m, but the finances of the lady or old gentleman who owned it would not stretch to taking it down to that level and maintaining it? Who would pay and what would be the arrangements?

Mrs. Brooke: My reason for alluding to such cases is that those matters must be discussed in Committee. That is the right place to consider such detailed concerns.

To return to my point on local authority resources, funding the appeal process would be expensive and there would be a lot of appeals until the backlog of cases had been dealt with, so I urge the Minister to consider the matter. The Bill is about quality of life. One neighbour's perfectly reasonable desire for privacy may result in misery for occupants of adjoining properties, so we need a mediation process backed by statute to resolve such conflicts.

1.57 pm

Mr. Christopher Chope (Christchurch): It is a pleasure to follow my Dorset neighbour, the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke), although I am disappointed that she did not pick up on the regulatory impact assessment, which answers the question of who will pay. The answer is that the local authorities will pay.

Mr. Forth: And the taxpayer.

Mr. Chope: And the taxpayer will pay. The regulatory impact assessment says that it would be possible for local authorities to raise some revenue from imposing charges for access to the regulatory regime and that the rest of the money would be distributed through the revenue support grant system if there was a shortfall. As the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole knows, that would not be much use in Dorset, because our local authorities are on the floor, and the people likewise.

Mrs. Brooke: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Chope: In a moment. If the Government say that they would add money to the revenue support grant,

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that does not mean any real additional money due to the impact of the floors and ceilings regime that they have introduced. East Dorset district council, part of whose area is in my constituency, does not receive any revenue support grant, so if the Government say that the burden of the measure would be met by money distributed from the centre through that grant, they are doing nothing at all to help my hard-pressed council tax payers and constituents. I shall now give way to the hon. Lady, if she wants to get in.

Mrs. Brooke: No thanks.

Mr. Chope: Okay. I am sorry that I have embarrassed the hon. Lady about that.

Sir Paul Beresford: To follow up my hon. Friend's point, we are dealing not with structures that are built, but with plants that grow. The Bill's promoter explained that with the dramatic example of his favourite plant, the leylandii. The payment problem would be annual, if not twice-yearly, if a hedge had to be kept in shape and trimmed.

Mr. Chope: My hon. Friend is right.

I was disappointed by the speech of the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) because although he was tremendously charming—he could have charmed the birds from the trees or from the leylandii—he was a little flippant. These are serious issues and if the Bill is brought forward in the form it is in at the moment many of our constituents will have much cause for complaint.

It is not just me expressing concerns about the Bill. A letter to me from a constituent states:


That letter shows the concern that there is among a large group of people. It is in the nature of the British people that they do not wake up to changes to the law until they have been imposed. If they find that changes to the law are adverse, they take it out on their Members of Parliament. I am doing everything in my power to alert my constituents to this legislation.

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I have looked at the April 2003 edition of another magazine, Garden Answers. It has a good play on words in the headline, "Bill to fix hedge rows". On the same page, another headline says, "Nextdoor nightmare". The article states:


Obviously, there are lots of other reasons why neighbours fall out with each other: barking dogs, cats defecating, smelly bonfires, noisy music, adults swearing at each other, litter in the garden, cockerels, tree roots, leaf fall, noxious weeds and so on. If we do not get this legislation right, it will add another reason: going off to the local authority to complain about the hedge and having it cut down or reduced in size.

It is not sensible for neighbours to fall out with each other and to try to force changes when those could be secured through amicable agreement. The hon. Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Chapman) said that he was not aware of any instance where it had been possible to mediate in such a hedge dispute. Only last month, as a result of my efforts at mediation, a conifer hedge was cut down by a neighbour, so that the person who complained to me and to him could be relieved of that oppressive hedge. Having cut down his hedges, the neighbour has asked why the person next door has done nothing about her pine trees. If we become too adversarial, it will be tit for tat. He will go off to complain to the local authority and costs will be incurred.

The hon. Member for Ealing, North said that it would be possible for the local authority to refuse vexatious complaints. That is true but, as the Bill stands, there would still be the right of appeal against such a refusal, with all that that involves. Unlike the situation in the High Court—where if a judge says that someone is a vexatious litigant, he is prevented from making any such complaints again without the leave of the court—there could still be vexatious people who want to take it out on their neighbours. As we have heard, if that dispute were generated at a time when a person was trying to sell a house, it would have to be declared to potential purchasers. The scope for neighbours to fall out with each other will not be restricted much by the Bill.

I was encouraged when the hon. Gentleman said that there would be objective tests. He will recall that when I expressed reservations about the previous Bill on the subject, it was not because I did not think that there should be legislation in this field. I wanted to ensure that the legislation was clear and unambiguous, and involved objective tests. I was keen that we awaited the outcome of the report organised by the Department of the Environment, as it then was, which looked at the best way to bring in some objective tests.

The Building Research Establishment produced a report, the contents of which have been useful in my constituency work in giving people an idea as to whether or not their hedge would result in an unacceptable or unreasonable loss of light for their neighbours. Comparing this Bill with the previous Bill—about which I had reservations—I see that the present Bill is going

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even wider. Clause 4, about complaints procedures, no longer includes this reference in clause 4(4) of the previous Bill:


That safeguard has now been removed from the Bill and, likewise, the definition of high hedge has been widened from the definition in the previous Bill of


to


In the latest draft, we have moved on from an objective assessment of whether there is an unacceptable loss of light as a result of a high hedge to the more subjective issue of whether the hedge itself has an impact upon the next-door neighbour. That is a recipe for disastrous law-making. I am hopeful that, in light of the guarantee given by the hon. Gentleman, objective tests will be introduced in Committee. I do not want to get a reputation as some sort of wrecker. I have always sought to be constructive.

Many comments were made—albeit late, at Report stage—during the passage of the previous Bill. The promoter of that Bill could have argued that that stage was too late to take on board many of the concerns expressed. However, the promoter of this Bill—the hon. Member for Ealing, North—knows that whether his Bill gets a Second Reading today is hanging by a whisker because of the shortage of time. However, if it does get a Second Reading, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that that has happened only because of the indulgence of hon. Members who have severe and serious reservations about it and wish the Bill to be substantially altered in Committee.

Last week, we heard from a different Minister—the Minister for Rural Affairs and Urban Quality of Life. I have never quite understood what happened to the Minister for rural quality of life. Anyway, that Minister expressed severe reservations about the Equine Welfare (Ragwort Control) Bill. He said:


He continued:


He then added:


I am sure that the Minister today will take this opportunity to explain how the Government's attitude to this Bill is consistent with what the Minister for Rural Affairs and Urban Quality of Life said last week. If the Bill gets a Second Reading, I hope that, in Committee, the Government will address a real concern that I and

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my constituents have—that the costs of this Bill will be very significant. Under the rules for the distribution of grant, constituents will end up paying for it.

The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) said that he thinks that the estimate of the total costs is an underestimate and that there may be as many as 17,000 cases as opposed to 10,000 cases.

I commend to the House the full regulatory impact assessment. It estimates that the cost of a council officer's time to investigate such complaints is, on average, £35 to £40 an hour, and that each complaint may take as long as eight hours to investigate. The assessment goes on to say that there might be 10,000 cases and an estimated 2,000 appeals over three years. That would lead to substantial costs. However, the assessment does not think that costs to the court service will be significant, because it is not thought that the criminal sanctions in the Bill will be used. That leads to an obvious question: why have criminal sanctions in the Bill? Why criminalise neighbours as the Bill proposes to do, when we do not criminalise them for other antisocial things that they do to each other? We should put the emphasis on mediation.

The hon. Member for Ealing, North referred—tongue in cheek, perhaps—to naturists. What he said would be fine if it were not to be considered alongside the impact of clause 70 of the Sexual Offences Bill. Up to now, if a naturist sat in his garden and the neighbours wanted to look at him or her, that has not been a criminal offence. However, under clause 70 of the Sexual Offences Bill, a person could be committing an offence just by lying nude in his or her garden. Many naturists choose to have highish hedges around their gardens to protect themselves. This Bill could require those hedges to be cut down, and the neighbours could then get the ultimate reward of being able to ask the police to prosecute the person in the garden for sunbathing in the nude. The neighbours would now able to see the naturist because they had required the hedge to be cut down. That is an issue that needs to be addressed, and perhaps anyone who had a high hedge could have as a defence the protection of their naturism.

I do not think that the libertarian arguments are overwhelming, but they must be taken into account. It is the House's responsibility to ensure that the Bill does not merely appease and appeal to a single-issue pressure group. If it is to change the law, it should do so objectively in a way that can be supported by all members of society.


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